Effective and improving schools: parallel fields of research and how they overlap

Everyone agrees that successful schools are desirable. This chapter seeks to establish a language with which we can identify the characteristics of success and a map to guide us through the processes that we necessarily engage in when creating or destroying those characteristics. The rest of the book attempts first to examine two of those processes-the exercise of leadership and the practice of teaching and learning-in some practical depth and then to offer a set, or menu, of small and larger interventions which we have seen offer disproportionate advantage in schools making progress, before finally considering the contribution of stakeholders and partners to school improvement.